The Claire Harris Poetry Prize, an initiative of Goose Lane’s icehouse poetry imprint, is designed to enhance the visibility of debut poetry collections by previously unpublished poets from Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities. The first competition for the prize ran in 2024 with Kazim Ali as the judge. Qurat Dar’s Non-Prophet was the inaugural prize winner and was published in 2025.

This second round of submissions for the biennial prize opens on January 9, 2026. The prize includes a cash award of $1,000, a contract for the publication of the collection under the icehouse poetry imprint in the following year (2027), and public readings in at least three Canadian cities. The recipient of the 2026 prize will be selected by poet, curator, and activist Cecily Nicholson.

The prize honours the legacy of Claire Harris, a generous mentor, provocative thinker, and singular voice in Canadian poetry, known for her adventurous verse; contrasting use of prose and poetry; alternating voices, ranging from British English to Trinidadian Creole; and visual experimentation. During her storied career, Harris won the Commonwealth Award for Poetry for the Americas Region, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Award for Poetry, the Alberta Culture Poetry Prize, and the Alberta Culture Special Award. Her most celebrated work, Drawing Down a Daughter, was a finalist for the 1992 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Goose Lane published many of Harris’s books throughout her career, including Translation into Fiction in 1984, Drawing Down a Daughter in 1992 (reissued in 2007), and She in 2000.

Eligibility

Eligible writers include Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada who are writers from Black, Indigenous, or other racialized communities and who have not previously published a book-length collection of poetry. (Poets who have published a chapbook, but not yet a book-length collection, are eligible to apply).

Manuscripts should be book-length works of poetry, i.e., approximately 48-100 pages. (Chapbook-length manuscripts are not eligible.) Submissions may draw upon a broad range of aesthetic practises, from lyric poetry to genre-busting experimentation.

How to Submit Your Poetry Manuscript

Please submit your manuscript through the Claire Harris Poetry Prize online portal on this page between January 9 and March 31, 2026. Please note that we are able to consider only one submission from an individual writer. There is no entry fee. Should you have any questions about the submission process, please contact Alan Sheppard, Goose Lane’s managing editor, at editor@gooselane.com.

Your submission should include:

• A cover letter that includes your contact information. Please include your postal address, email, and telephone numbers where we can contact you.
• The complete manuscript.

Please ensure that all documents are submitted in MS Word (.doc, .docx) or as a PDF file as a single attachment in 10-12 pt readable font.

We prefer that you refrain from submitting your manuscript to other publishers while it is under consideration for the Claire Harris Poetry Prize. However, should you decide to send your manuscript to other publishers, please ensure that you let us know in your cover letter and notify us immediately should the status of your manuscript change during our selection process. 

What to Expect after Submission

We will notify you that we have received your manuscript as soon as it arrives. We will also inform you of our final decision within four months of the closing date for submissions, i.e., by July 31, 2026, except in extraordinary circumstances.

About the Selection Process for the 2026 Prize

Every manuscript will be read by Cecily Nicholson, who will select the winning manuscript for the 2026 prize. Nicholson will also work with the author to edit the prize-winning manuscript for publication.

About Cecily Nicholson

Cecily Nicholson is the author of five books and a past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. She is the inaugural honouree of the Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading award from the Poetry in Canada Society and was the 2025 Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics at UC Berkeley. Nicholson teaches in the School of Creative Writing at UBC. Her most recent work, Crowd Source, follows the diurnal movement of crows.

About Claire Harris

Claire Harris was a decorated Black Trinidadian Canadian poet who emigrated to Canada in 1966. Her poetry is known for verse techniques such as contrasting prose and poetry and for alternating voices, ranging from British English to Trinidadian Creole. Harris’s innovative poetry dramatizes and makes public the issues of injustice in colonial and post-colonial settings and the psychological struggles experienced by racialized women who face violence and oppression. She mentored numerous young poets as both a teacher and an editor at Dandelion and blue buffalo.

Harris’s eight books of poetry include Fables from the Women’s Quarters and Translation into Fiction, both released in 1984. Her later work, which includes Drawing Down a Daughter and She, combines prose and poetry to give urgency to the search for a cultural home. During her lifetime, her work won international acclaim; was widely anthologized in Canada, the US, and abroad; and was translated into German and Hindi. Harris won the Commonwealth Award for Poetry for the Americas Region, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Award for Poetry, the Alberta Culture Poetry Prize, and the Alberta Culture Special Award. She was also a finalist for a Governor General’s Award in 1992.

About icehouse poetry and Goose Lane Editions

Goose Lane Editions was founded in 1954 as Fiddlehead Poetry Books to provide the opportunity for Canadian poets to have their work published in book form. Over the years, the press has published more than five hundred volumes of poetry under the Fiddlehead Poetry Books, Goose Lane Editions, and icehouse poetry imprints, including original collections, volumes of new and selected poems, and cloth-bound editions of collected works. The press is proud to have been the publisher of poets such as Kazim Ali, Herménégilde Chiasson (in translation), George Elliott Clarke, Kwame Dawes, Pamela Mordecai, Soraya Peerbaye, Sue Sinclair, John Thompson, Douglas Walbourne-Gough, and (of course) Claire Harris. The icehouse poetry imprint is overseen by a national board of published poets.

The general submission window for icehouse poetry will reopen on April 1, 2026. Poets submitting to the contest can indicate on the submission form that they’d like their manuscript be included in icehouse poetry’s general submissions later this spring.